From Spike TV to streaming: A brief history of The Game Awards
The Game Awards, Geoff Keighley’s annual celebration of the video game industry and the people who make it, is a fixture of the video game landscape at this point—as dependable as a mascot tapping its feet when you put the controller down. But the show has evolved a lot since its inception, too.
What we know as The Game Awards actually evolved out of a previous incarnation, the Spike Video Game Awards (or VGAs), that was filled with celebrities and oddball moments that are sometimes hilarious (and sometimes downright odd) to look back upon.
So as we gear up for The Game Awards 2024, which you can stream live on December 12, let’s take a look back at the history of the show and some of the most memorable games and moments.
The Spike TV era
What's now known as The Game Awards is a direct descendant of the Spike Video Game Awards.
It was a different era. The event was televised on the Spike TV network, which itself was a rebrand of TNN (The Nashville Network), focused on a younger male audience—just the kind of audience that would watch an awards show about video games.
Keighley was intimately involved in the production of the Spike Video Game Awards, but he wasn’t the de facto face of the operation. For a decade, the awards show had not just celebrity guests and performers but also celebrity hosts, including Joel McHale, David Spade, Samuel L. Jackson, and Zachary Levi.
Some of those celebrity cameos seemed tailor-made for Spike’s edgy branding, but the results were…mixed. McHale, for instance, aimed his trademark dry sarcasm squarely at gamers, which became a point of contention. He acknowledged as much with his first words as a presenter in 2018 with, “Hi, Geoff. Wow! I can’t believe you had me back!” And it doesn’t get much raunchier than Jack Black making out with an Xbox 360 and inviting a jealous PlayStation 3 into bed for some romance.
Looking back on the Spike Video Game Awards winners is like looking at a gigantic list of video games so good that they’re now considered classics. Consider just the Game of the Year award-winners from the many ceremonies: The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, Grand Theft Auto V, Red Dead Redemption, Grand Theft Auto IV, BioShock, The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, Resident Evil 4, Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, Madden NFL 2004.
In 2013, Spike rebranded the Spike Video Game Awards to VGX—and then in 2014, Spike decided that a decade was long enough and ended the awards. By 2018, just as TNN had once become Spike TV, Spike dissolved and reformulated into the Paramount Network.
But while Spike was busy evolving (and then disappearing), Geoff Keighley was busy keeping an awards show alive.
The Game Awards era
Spike may have been done with the VGX, but Geoff Keighley wasn’t. The year after the VGX dissolved, The Game Awards came to life. The idea was the same from the beginning: be the Academy Awards of video games.
Keighley became the host (and co-host), the visible face of the celebration. Beyond the awards, every show is also packed with news, reveals, trailers, and performances. And The Game Awards became a streaming-first show, which seems normal now but was pretty novel a decade ago.
Keighley also extended his hosting-producing empire over the years, serving as the emcee of Gamescom’s Opening Night Live ceremony and the proprietor of Summer Game Fest, which fills the industry-wide hole left by E3.
But The Game Awards loom largest, and he and his team spend most of their year planning the December show.
“It’s a constant balance,” Keighley said. “Sometimes there’s the perception that our show is too commercial, and I get that. But we’re an independent show, meaning that we don’t make money selling games. If I’m a first-party platform doing a livestream event, it’s a marketing expense to make an event. We don’t have that luxury, so we need sponsors to make the show. Luckily, sponsorships have improved over the years as more partners come to the table and really want to understand this audience."
“But in the same way Comic-Con is a big celebration for movies or streaming shows, we’re about celebrating great work and previewing what’s coming next, to get the fans excited about the future of the medium.”
We've now seen more than a decade of winners and performers at The Game Awards. During its first year, back in 2014, Dragon Age: Inquisition won Game of the Year. In 2015, The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt took the top honors. In 2016, Overwatch became GOTY. In 2017, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild was GOTY, and Sid Meier’s Civilization® VI won Best Strategy Game. God of War became Game of the Year in 2016, Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice in 2019, The Last of Us Part II in 2020, It Takes Two in 2021, Elden Ring in 2022, and in 2023 the honor went to Baldur’s Gate 3.
The Game Awards are a more buttoned-up and professional affair than its predecessor, but live shows do still lend themselves to some fascinating moments—like when Eddie Veddar played Pearl Jam’s “Future Days” during the height of the pandemic in 2020. Or who could forget 2022 when Al Pacino did bicep curls with a trophy before hugging Christopher Judge, after the latter won Best Performance for God of War Ragnarök?
Or this:
And that brings us to 2024 and the current incarnation of The Game Awards, which is full of nominees, some of which are as likely to sound like classics in the future as BioShock is today.
A selection of this year’s nominees includes Black Myth: Wukong for Game of the Year, Dragon Age: The Veilguard and Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown for Innovation in Accessibility, Humberly González for Best Performance in Star Wars Outlaws, Indika and Tales of Kenzera: Zau in the Games for Impact category, Fortnite for Best Ongoing Game, and Manor Lords and Pacific Drive for Best Debut Indie Game.
You can see every nominee in every category in our story covering The Game Awards 2024 nominations—and you can even vote for Fortnite Island of the Year before 9 PM EST on December 11, too! Search “The Game Awards Vote” in Fortnite, or enter island code 0853-1358-8532.
The Game Awards 2024 takes place on Thursday, December 12, 2024, broadcast live from the Peacock Theater in Los Angeles from 7:30 PM – 11 PM EST / 4:30 PM - 8 PM PST. Be sure to check out our one-stop-shop story about The Game Awards 2024, which we’ll be updating constantly to bring you everything of note—including live during the show.